2008 U.S. Ryder Cup Team

How do the U.S. and European teams stack up when it comes to the blocking and tackling of golf — long driving, finding the fairway, hitting greens in regulation and holing putts? To find out, we added up each player's rank on his respective tour in those four categories and divided by four. We took that number and, going from lowest total to highest, listed the 24 Ryder Cuppers from one to 24. Voila! The Ryder Cup Rank. (For the two Europeans, Padraig Harrington and Ian Poulter, who qualify as members of both tours, we combined their U.S. and European rankings total and divided by two.) The players are shown in order of Ryder Cup Rank. (The European team is here.)

— Statistics by Sal Johnson, text by Gary Van Sickle

Chad Campbell
Colleyville, Texas
Age: 34

RC Rank: 3
Driving Yds. 288.1 (84th)
Fairways Pct. 66.34% (51st)
GIR Pct. 67.76% (15th)
Putting Avg. 1.759 (21st)

Ryder Cup (2) 1-3-2
World Rank 53rd

In a straw poll before Paul Azinger made his captain's picks, nearly two dozen writers were asked which four players they would add to the team. Campbell didn't get a single vote. He quietly had a good late summer, though, with three top 10s in the six events before Azinger made his choices. Closing scores of 69 and 66 at the Deutsche Bank were convincing.

Credit: Todd Bigelow/SI